BackEU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region supports HELCOM in tackling hot spots
In September 2025, Policy Area Nutri and Policy Area Hazards organised a joint workshop to support the work on HELCOM hot spot designation criteria.
HELCOM is in the process of developing new criteria for designating and deleting so-called “hot spots”, which are areas with sources of major negative impact on the marine ecosystem. The hot spot process can help to prioritise where intervention is needed, and is highly useful to the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region as well.
Policy Area Hazards as well as Policy Area Nutri have priorities relating to the HELCOM hot spot criteria. In particular, topics such as contaminated sediments, submerged objects, nutrient emissions and recycling, and internal loading are highly relevant for the sea-based hot spot criteria. The sea-based hot spot criteria is an entirely new type of hot spot, and has raised particularly many questions among the HELCOM countries.
The member states of the EU Strategy of the Baltic Sea Region are committed to supporting the work and the objectives of HELCOM. At this stage, the HELCOM contracting parties are testing the criteria, and have expressed need to discuss and share their experiences. An external workshop organised by the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region Cordinators proved to be a fruitful way of informally discussing experiences with finding data, involving stakeholders, level of ambition, prioritisation and much more.
The workshop is a stellar example of how the Strategy and HELCOM objectives go hand in hand.
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